Risky Bucket

Many of you probably remember riding with your mom on the days before seatbelts were mandatory ( or maybe your grandma remembers …) and if she put on her brakes really hard her arm automatically came out to protect you from hitting your head. That’s what moms do. It is our instinct to make sure our children do not endure pain or get hurt. So here is where we have a discussion about children taking risk. What happens if we never allow them to take a risk? What happens if we never allow them to fail? What happens if we never allow them to fail and try again? Children need the opportunity to take risks within reason with the support of an adult supervising to know that they can accept challenges and be successful. We learned the most from doing things and failing and then taking a deep breath to try again.

At Bright beginnings we really try to allow children to indulge in reasonable risk with the supervision of teachers. As children take risks we are using dialogue to help them understand what the consequence maybe and of course, ready to jump in if we see a real concern.

We want children to be able to think. We want them to be aware of their environment and to be able to assess that environment. We want them to grow stronger. We want him to be able to reflect on a situation and be creative to think of solutions.

Ultimately taking risks develops a strong level of confidence. Isn’t that what we want when children leave our close supervision ? Don’t we want all these skills intact? We want them to be confident.

Today a child noticed the bucket hanging from the pulley system and asked to play. This is a wonderful tool for learning So much. Just in conversation you can teach terms like up, down, fast, slow, gravity, full , empty, and so much more. Then there’s the whole science of a child learning how to make the bucket go up and down. It is risky because the children are on the other side as the bucket comes down and if it goes too fast and hit someone in the head but may hurt.

Things may come a out of the bucket on someone. But with a close supervision of a teacher today they were able to experience risk.